This is a complex issue. Some would claim "yes" - but there was a great and very detailed debate of the subject back when the 990 was announced in which Altec (then using the user name soundhound) presented a strong argument against balanced connections for the typical home installation. I went looking for the thread but couldn't find it. Basically, though, the one case where it is always easy to justify using balanced cables is the case for which they were created: environments with a lot of EMI/RFI noise where the ability to reject that noise is really valuable. For a space like a recording studio, with a huge amount of gear and a ton of wiring for various systems all wrapped together in a single space, that noise rejection is priceless. For a short cabling run in a home, that noise rejection is rarely going to be important. Once you get away from that single situation, though, you will be hard pressed to get a really unified consensus on the benefits of balanced connections. (And that doesn't even touch on the issue of whether the equipment at either end is truly "balanced" internally or not...)